Chapter 21 Seraphina
Chapter twenty-one
Seraphina
His little sister.
Seated at the small table that still housed Aldric and Reyla’s unfinished Sovereign game, her mind raced.
Her thoughts swirled. That didn’t make sense.
A female child born of King Warwick and Queen Rosa, Aldric’s mother, had never been recorded in the Hargrave lineage. Aldric had been an only child.
Until his half-brother, Edmund, came along. But that little worm had been birthed twenty years later by King Warwick’s second wife, Queen Charlotte.
Had Reyla been born…after Warwick divorced Rosa? Was she Aldric’s half-sister, sired by a different father? But that would mean she would have to be twenty years old or younger. And she looked to be in her thirties.
Seraphina frowned to herself and peeked through the doorway leading into the bedroom where Reyla and Dame Florence worked together to bind Olivia’s injured hand. The mystery was exceedingly puzzling. She supposed she could just ask her husband. He was sitting right there.
But his attention was all for trying to ease his boot off his injured foot. The silence between them was stifling—broken only by the soft, irritated rumble emanating from her Crow at odd intervals.
Guilt churned her stomach. This was all her fault.
“Here,” she blurted out, slipping to her knees in front of his chair before her rational mind could balk at the idea of handling his bleeding foot. She had never been any good with blood. But she had to do something. “Let me help.”
When she reached for his boot, he flinched away, a scowl on his lips. “Don’t.”
“Why not?” she asked, her jaw clenching.
Did he think her incapable? Did he not trust her to handle his wound with care?
His single dark eye bored into her own, as if trying to pierce her straight through. She met him stare for stare, refusing to bend beneath the weight of his attention. Refusing to be cowed.
He looked away first and muttered, “Because it’s beneath you.”
Those four words were like a punch straight to her stomach. They left her breathless and hollow in a way she didn’t fully understand.
Is that truly what he thought of her? Of him?
That helping him was…beneath her?
Swallowing hard against the rising lump in her throat, she pushed herself to her feet and wandered off toward the kitchen. The cottage was small and easy to navigate. Homey and quaint, though the fabrics were rather threadbare and the furnishings battered.
It didn’t take her long to find the things she needed.
“What are you doing?” he asked, clearly suspicious when she returned with a bowl filled with water and a wash rag.
She settled back onto her knees before him, careful not to let the water slosh onto the floor. Stiffly, she replied, “Aiding the true King of Drakmor.”
Their marital status aside, helping a fellow monarch was hardly beneath her.
But feet were disgusting. A man’s feet, doubly so. And that was before one accounted for the blood. She focused her attention on the floor rather than on the task at hand while she perched the bowl of water in her lap, peeled off Aldric’s boot and sock, and set about cleaning his wound.
He sat like a statue, perfectly still, obviously uncomfortable.
To distract them both, she softly asked, “How old is Reyla?”
“About your age.”
She peeked up at him with a frown. “Then why am I just now learning about her?”
Dryly, her Crow observed, “Probably because babies aren’t typically privy to politics, and you were a baby when she was born.
” When she pursed her lips, unamused by his quip, he sighed and admitted under his breath, “Because my father didn’t want one more broken child staining his precious bloodline.
I can count on one hand how many people know about Reyla. ”
A secret child, then.
Seraphina returned to her work.
She had more questions—many more questions. But she didn’t know how to ask them delicately. Finally, she settled on taking a page from Aldric’s own book.
Just being blunt.
“Is something wrong with her?”
She might as well have insulted his mother for the snarl that burst past her Crow’s lips. “Nothing is wrong with Reyla.”
“You know what I mean,” she whispered, chancing a look toward the bedroom.
The three women there still seemed preoccupied with their own business.
Sucking in a deep breath, she forged on ahead with her prying.
“You just called her broken yourself. And families like ours don’t try to hide an heir unless something would be deemed amiss. ”
In an effort to extend an olive branch of peace, she softly observed, “She looks positively perfect.”
“She is,” Aldric agreed. “Never gets sick. Has perfect balance. She’s an athletic thing—more athletic than I’ll ever be. Always has been.”
Seraphina kept silent, just letting him talk now.
And talk he did. The words spilled from him all in a rush, as though he were glad for the opportunity to discuss his little sister for once.
“But she’s different. She was never like other children.
Kept to herself. Preferred sorting the same things by color and shape over and over again rather than playing with them. She’s never spoken. Not a single word.”
He sighed. “It makes no sense. But yes, she is perfect. Very clever, just like you.”
Seraphina fought hard to have no reaction to that.
He thought she was clever?
“She can read anything you throw at her, too—Kunishi, Ancient Drakmori, Lothmeeran. She can understand it all. If you ever want to understand how something works, just let her study it for you. She can play chess. Sovereign.”
So far, Reyla Hargrave sounded exactly like the sort of daughter a king would be proud to claim.
“But she’s…very na?ve,” Aldric finally admitted on a whisper. “Trusting. She’ll believe anything you tell her. Do anything you want her to do. Go with you into a dark alley. Ingest poison.”
Seraphina froze in the midst of reaching for the roll of bandages on the table. Now, she understood why Reyla was a secret. It was for her own safety.
She would not have lasted long in the Drakmori court.
Her Crow huffed, clearly frustrated. “I feel like her jailer, keeping her locked away all the time. But what else can I do? At least she has Dame Florence, I suppose.”
Seraphina swallowed hard against a fresh wave of emotion welling within her as she gently wound the bandage around Aldric’s foot and tied it off. Love. He loved his sister dearly. She could hear it in every word he spoke.
When she finally sat back on her heels and lifted her gaze back to his, she found him watching her. Frowning.
“I don’t know why I just told you all of that,” he muttered under his breath.
She didn’t know either, but she was glad he had. It helped her understand her Crow just a little bit better—to know that beneath his leather armor and his growls, there was a man just trying to do his best for the one he cared about most.
Rising to her feet, she rubbed her knees and stretched her sore legs. She was unaccustomed to kneeling for any length of time, especially on such a hard floor. “How many people know about Reyla?”
Aldric tracked her every movement. “Calix, Rakon, Leif, Kyn. You.” After a beat, he growled, “Edmund. I suppose that’s more than one hand’s worth of people now.”
Edmund? More questions bubbled up to the forefront of her mind at that revelation. But just as she was about to ask them, she noticed the way Aldric was staring at her. Like a man trying to riddle out a particularly difficult puzzle.
She frowned. “What?”
He shrugged, his one-eyed gaze fixating on her legs. “I just never thought I’d ever see you wearing pants.”
Heat bloomed in her cheeks. Stiffly, she twitched her cloak closed, hiding her trouser-clad legs from view. Trying to mask her embarrassment, she hastily asked, “And how did Reyla come to have a holy knight for a companion?”
“Former holy knight,” Aldric corrected, his attention drifting back to her face. “I’ve answered all your questions, kirei, and now you’re going to answer mine.” His harsh tone made her bristle, her hackles already rising. And then he asked his question.
The one she had been dreading.
“Why were you spying on me?”
Sucking in her cheeks, she bit down hard on the inside of them and shot another look toward the bedroom door. She expected Dame Florence, Reyla, and Olivia to still be preoccupied with their own matters. But they weren’t.
Her stomach plummeted when she realized they must have finished tending to Olivia’s hand some time ago. Now, all three women stood there, watching her and Aldric.
What had they seen? What had they heard?
Aldric followed her gaze. “Florence?”
The lady knight stepped out of the bedroom with a grunt. “I’ll put some tea on. It seems like it’s going to be a long night. Would you like to help me, Reyla?” She glanced at Olivia. “You. You’re coming, too.”
Olivia thinned her lips, obviously wanting to protest being bossed around by the older woman. But one look from Seraphina was all it took for her friend to slink off after the other two.
Affording her the semblance of privacy with Aldric once more.
Glancing down, she scuffed her booted foot against the floor. She didn’t want to tell him. It all seemed so ridiculous now. But she knew if they were ever going to truly be allies, they needed to start being honest with one another. He had shared with her about his sister.
She might as well start being honest with him, too.
“Because,” she whispered, her shoulders hunching, as if that stance alone might protect her from the mocking laughter he was surely about to fling her way, “…I thought she was your mistress.”
The silence that fell between them was deafening. She was entirely too aware of the rasp of her own breath, the burn of his asymmetrical stare against her face, the flutter of her pulse.
After a small eternity, he finally repeated, “You thought she was my mistress.”